Hiss
by Tripwire Alarm
Summary: A little oneshot. With them, even something that should be civil walks a fine, incendiary line. It's just so hard being nice.  Orphen/Cleo. Rating is for some language.


"**Hiss"**  
>—A Vignette—<p>

Late afternoon sunlight dripped through the tree canopy like a slow, golden syrup, leaving dappled patterns of light across her bare legs and feet where he set her down in the grass, sticky and miserable in her half soaked clothes.

"What the _fuck_ possessed you to run after him like that?" he was saying, kneeling in the grass next to her, his fingers already closing lightly around her ankle and pulling it up against his leg to get a better look at it: already swollen and darkening to a wicked purple around the prominent curve of bone. His eyes flicked up at her irritably while she sat, dejected, her hair still dry and spread across her shoulders in a golden net, a corkscrew curl at each temple swaying almost comically as she shook her head.

"I don't know." She moped, voice wooden. "It seemed like he could get hurt…I just reacted."

"Don't you think a thing like that can probably take care of itself?" his voice seemed all the more sharp when he was berating her. And really, she'd expected no less the moment she'd slipped on the wet rocks, racing like an idiot after Reiki as he'd run out into the shallows of the lake as though he wasn't a wild animal with defensive strength to spare. She couldn't have helped it; she'd never even had time to think about it. She loved that little pup, and couldn't help feeling protective. It was natural, her mother would say. Especially for a woman. But of course, not only would Orphen never understand that; she was too deflated to invite his comments on just exactly what made her so sure it applied to her when the term woman only technically described her in terms of gender alone. Or something to that effect. So she just nodded dumbly.

He was pulling off his gloves, prodding her ankle just under the bone with his fingers. "So. That hurt?"

She sucked in a hissing breath, nodding with a pained enthusiasm. She watched him grimace, circling his fingers around the swollen joint and using the other hand to push her foot gently upward, testing its mobility. She yelped in response, reflexively trying to jerk her leg away from him but he held it tight, his eyes returning up to hers to find them shining with collected tears.

"Sprained," he said flatly. "Good job, genius."

She leaned back against the tree, fighting the tears in her eyes from spilling. A hot breeze rustled the leaves overhead and as he set down her leg in the stickery summer grass, she heard his long, drawn out sigh.

She closed her eyes for a moment, gathering her scattered wits. "I'm sorry."

Despite how she hated apologizing for the bad results of her good intentions, it just seemed like the right thing to say. This was just going to make the next day or so travelling west towards Laindast a number of things: embarrassing, inconvenient, slow. Sure, if Orphen deigned to heal it, it would be better soon. But it wouldn't take right away. She knew enough about magical healing by now that she knew it didn't make it as though it had never happened.

He just looked at her, as blankly as he basically ever did, appearing to hold back his natural response. He simply reached up and untied his red headband and draped it across his knee, then shifted closer to her to pick up her leg and pull it over his own. A few flourishes of his hands and he had the strap of red cloth secured in place, and began wrapping it methodically around the rapidly purpling ankle, and with each tight tug, she winced.

She watched him. She watched his hands as they slowly wrapped the fabric in secure crosses around her bruised joint. His face as he watched his work intently. The patterns of light shining down on his dark hair and shoulders. Words were gathering in her throat, and instead of giving voice to those, she filled the silence with something else.

"I feel so stupid."

He didn't even look up. "You should be used to that."

"Bastard. I mean for running out on the rocks like that."

"Well, it was a stupid thing to do."

Prick. He hadn't even missed a beat before agreeing. "Oh, yes," she retorted, teeth clenched. " I'm sure you've always thought everything through thoroughly before you've ever done _anything_. I can't imagine, _you_, acting on impulse and endangering yourself needlessly."

"You're right. I didn't think _this_ through. I should have just left you floundering on those rocks."

Both her hands bunched up into fists, she was biting down on the urge to swing at him when he wasn't looking. "Yes. You could have," she grit out. "But instead _you_ ran across those same rocks to help me."

He looked up at that. "Well. What would you expect me to do?"

"Oh, didn't you just say..."

Orphen looked back down to finish up wrapping her ankle, giving the cloth an extra tug as he did so. She squeaked, which seemed to make him smirk despite himself. Cleo glowered at him as he tied up the ends of the cloth in a little knot, and she folded her arms tight.

"Where's Majic?" she grumbled, looking defiantly away across the hillside.

"In the forest, looking for comfrey, like I told him."

"Comfrey? Do you need that?"

"No."

"Then why'd you ask him to get it?" she snapped, increasingly combative.

"To keep him out of my face."

"Oh." Well, that seemed logical enough.

When she looked back, he'd stood up and was holding a hand down at her with an impatient expression, and she took it tentatively, his hand closing on hers and pulling her halfway up to her feet with a jerk. She wobbled, favoring her good ankle, reaching forward, leaning against him out of necessity. She whimpered at the resulting lance of pain when she tested weight on her other foot, and wavered forward in her awkward stance enough that he caught her by the elbows.

"Well, look at that, cripple." He quipped with a mean smile, plainly amused at her misfortune, which seemed typical.

"You're not helping any!"

"Why should I?" He weaved her around by her arms. "I could have just left you there. Would have been kind of poetic, watching your royal highness having to beg someone to come pull her out of the dirty water."

"Hmm, I wonder why you didn't gather up an audience and charge for viewing, you _charlatan_. You're good at that kind of thing." She glared up at him; the summer afternoon light stenciled through the spaces between the leaves overhead and shined down on him, a shock of black hair, his tattered jacket and smooth coppery skin. He flashed another cruel grin.

"Because apparently I _enjoy_ you making me fucking miserable more than making a few bucks, as crazy as that shit is."

"You're always miserable."

"No thanks to you, cupcake. And you're fucking welcome, by the way."

"_God_! Do you have _any_ idea how much I hate you?" And she did. Really.

"Not as much as I think I'd prefer," he snapped, pulling her up the rest of the way with his domineering hold on her arms, testing her balance. "You can toddle on home any time you like; you won't see me chasing after you."

"Maybe I _will_."

"Promise?" he intoned nastily. She could feel his cool breath on her temple.

"Fine!" she returned, glaring up at him, angrily fascinated with the almost red-brown color of his eyes even as she hissed it in his face. Her hands were splayed open, pushing on his chest, his hands caught tight around each of her elbows and bearing her up.

Cleo jerked up hard, barely getting that last word out before she found she'd gotten too close in her blind, impulsive aggression, all at once her heart surging into a straining pace in her chest, a frantic bird in a fleshy cage to have nearly made a fool out of herself again by crashing her head against his. She would have sputtered if she'd had the sense, reeled back in disgusted fury but instead just froze like a frightened animal.

"_Good_." He murmured that word, and when he did, she almost felt his lips ghost against hers, or maybe she'd imagined it, inadvertently tasting the sweetgrass smoke on his breath. He was too close to see him, and her instincts made her eyes drop closed. Her knees trembled under her, further impairing her ability to stand. All she could feel was his hands on her, the half-butterfly wing touch of his mouth, the breeze of his breath, and the resonance of that whisper shaking through her like a flood.

She wanted to say something, anything, but her throat was dry and her voice had vanished in that desert. Instead he held her prisoner; taking advantage of the fact that she couldn't walk away and he seemed to know she wouldn't slug him. Even though she wanted to. Really.

"Tell me you hate me," he said maliciously, a sibilant hiss that she almost _felt_ more than she _heard_; the effect was devastating. She was starting to shake. She didn't know why, but she was. She wasn't afraid of him.

Although he'd affirmed on more than one occasion that probably she should have been.

"Ah…" she felt him tense when she replied.

Still neither moved, locked in a bizarre challenge. Some twisted game of chicken. This could only happen to them.

_Tell me you hate me._

His hands squeezed her arms again when she didn't finish, she felt his head tilt, the inclining press of his mouth on hers for less than a beat of her pounding heart before a sweet, triumphant call sounded from over the hill.

"Master, I found the comfrey!"

Just as sudden as the press of his mouth had begun, it vanished. His quick hands pushed her back to arm's length, before he dropped her softly in the grass and she just fell with the momentum, frozen and shocked, her heart in her throat, the spell of silence snapped like a dry twig.

"I hate you," she whispered up at him, the venom she'd hoped to inject into the statement falling flat. She watched his eyes flash away from where Majic was approaching and down to her with the corner of his mouth tightening into an annoyed grimace.

"Too slow, Cleo."

With that he turned and headed down the hill toward the boy, leaving her in the grass, containing her heartbeat with slow breathing.

She repeated it again to herself, tiny and under her breath, just to solidify it. She didn't know why she hadn't just shouted it at him when he'd asked to hear it.

She murmured it, watching him descend, the flush still burning on her face, the memory of his hands on her wrapped ankle and his breath on her lips. Too slow. Just another attempt to rile her up. He knew she hated to do anything he intended or wanted. She wouldn't be tricked that easily. Why would he want her to hate him, anyway? It didn't make sense, even for him.

Even though her heart was still hammering like she'd forgotten how to breathe, she repeated it. Solidified it. Gave it life.

"I hate you," she whispered, even though by now, he was too far away to hear her.

And she did. Really.


End file.
